New Essay on Guernica--The Story of Bag

A Narrative For Hard Times--The story of Bag--up on Guernica Magazine blog!

Thanks editors!

Brief Narrative of AWP with Paintings from the Art Institute of Chicago

I started out in the cold Chicago glow of all my far-away friends and new writers to adore. Light shot out from everywhere, and sometimes I had to lock myself in my room and breathe real slowly and remember that quiet was awfully important. Then light shot out from everywhere again. And it snowed on my hats (one white, and one black). And light shot out from the inside until I sucked it back in and held it in my lungs and in between my ears.


(Georgia O'Keeffe, Electric Light)


Then I walked around and swam too (underwater! underwater!) like a fish. I saw the Buddha Seated in Meditation (Dhyanamudra) and got ready to enter my world again. Big buildings that I work in and stare out on. And there's magic sometimes when the light is just right.


(Georgia O'Keeffe, The Shelton with Sunspots, NY)

Then I took the plane, met more writers, and tried to hold on to all my far-away friends and far-away lights like buoys in all that icy water. Big red buoy all covered with life, I particularly like how it becomes one with the sea, but manages still to float despite all the ocean pulling it inward.



(Peter Blume, Buoy)

New poems in...

Fourth River

Subtropics

Secondrun

Thanks Editors!

Readings at AWP

Readings..whoa. Hope you can make it.

#1.
Friday, February 13, 2009
Time:
4:30pm - 5:45pm
Location:
Astoria, 3rd Floor
Street:
Hilton, Chicago, 720 South Michigan Avenue
City/Town:
North Chicago, IL

F187. Astoria, 3rd Floor
Milkweed Editions Poetry Reading. (Wayne Miller, Eireann Lorsung, Alex Lemon, Melissa Kwasny, Ada Limón, and Managing Editor James Cihlar) This reading features new work by five distinctive poets—Ada Limón, Melissa Kwasny, Alex Lemon, Eireann Lorsung, and Wayne Miller—all recently published by or forthcoming from Milkweed Editions, one of the largest literary nonprofit publishers in the country. Commemorating Milkweed's twenty-fifth anniversary as a book publisher, this event is an exciting opportunity to discover innovative work. Moderated by Wayne Miller, author of The Book of Props and editor of Pleaides.

#2.

Poems Up on P.F.S Post- Art Recess

New Poems


Thanks P.F.S-Maximum Post-Avant!

Happy Birthday Elizabeth Bishop.

The first and only book I ever stole was from my English teacher's classroom during my Junior year (which was also my senior year, but that's a longer story). It was a small book that contained a few poems by Elizabeth Bishop. I was in love, of course, as I was 16 and in agony. And then I fell in love with these poems. First it was, One Art. Then, The Fish. And finally, after many readings, I began to understand The Man-moth and was unhinged. Today is Bishop's Birthday. She would have been 98. I've read the majority of her letters back and forth to Robert Lowell and most of her poems. I'm not a scholar (lord knows, I can barely spell), but I consider myself a deep appreciate-er of her work. She baffles me and inspires me. I'm having a little birthday party for her right here at this very moment. We've got coffee. And poems (what more is there?).

In her letters, one of my favorite quotes, is this treasure:

September 8th, 1948

"Dear Cal (Robert Lowell),

I think you said a while ago that I'd "laugh you to scorn" over some conversation you & I had had about how to protect oneself against solitude & ennui--but indeed I wouldn't. That's just the kind of "suffering" I'm most at home with & helpless about, I'm afraid, and what with 2 days of fog and alarmingly low tides I've really got it bad & think I'll write you a note before I go out & eat some mackerel."




The Man-moth

Here, above,
cracks in the buldings are filled with battered moonlight.
The whole shadow of Man is only as big as his hat.
It lies at his feet like a circle for a doll to stand on,
and he makes an inverted pin, the point magnetized to the moon.
He does not see the moon; he observes only her vast properties,
feeling the queer light on his hands, neither warm nor cold,
of a temperature impossible to records in thermometers.

But when the Man-Moth
pays his rare, although occasional, visits to the surface,
the moon looks rather different to him. He emerges
from an opening under the edge of one of the sidewalks
and nervously begins to scale the faces of the buildings.
He thinks the moon is a small hole at the top of the sky,
proving the sky quite useless for protection.
He trembles, but must investigate as high as he can climb.

Up the façades,
his shadow dragging like a photographer's cloth behind him
he climbs fearfully, thinking that this time he will manage
to push his small head through that round clean opening
and be forced through, as from a tube, in black scrolls on the light.
(Man, standing below him, has no such illusions.)
But what the Man-Moth fears most he must do, although
he fails, of course, and falls back scared but quite unhurt.

Then he returns
to the pale subways of cement he calls his home. He flits,
he flutters, and cannot get aboard the silent trains
fast enough to suit him. The doors close swiftly.
The Man-Moth always seats himself facing the wrong way
and the train starts at once at its full, terrible speed,
without a shift in gears or a gradation of any sort.
He cannot tell the rate at which he travels backwards.

Each night he must
be carried through artificial tunnels and dream recurrent dreams.
Just as the ties recur beneath his train, these underlie
his rushing brain. He does not dare look out the window,
for the third rail, the unbroken draught of poison,
runs there beside him. He regards it as a disease
he has inherited the susceptibility to. He has to keep
his hands in his pockets, as others must wear mufflers.

If you catch him,
hold up a flashlight to his eye. It's all dark pupil,
an entire night itself, whose haired horizon tightens
as he stares back, and closes up the eye. Then from the lids
one tear, his only possession, like the bee's sting, slips.
Slyly he palms it, and if you're not paying attention
he'll swallow it. However, if you watch, he'll hand it over,
cool as from underground springs and pure enough to drink.

See a little snip-it from Voices and Visions and here the poems aloud:

Man-Moth and One Art

Here's hoping that today is a good day to foster tears, and to try to slip through the moon.

new one.

{poem was here}

I Am My Own MacDowell

My dearest friend is at MacDowell (actually she's here right now, but don't tell anyone). It's her second time. Last night we caught up and talked about the dear deer and the good and talented people she's met. It made me want, very much, to apply to an arts colony. I haven't ever applied because I've had a full-time job in publishing for years and years. I like my job a great deal, and I am very GRATEFUL for it, but it doesn't allow for months off or long uninterrupted hours of writing. So if I did get in, I wouldn't be able to attend. I did have a fellowship at the Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center in 2001-2002. For seven months I wrote, and walked, and went a little crazy. It was wonderful and terrifying.

But today, I've decided to create my own MacDowell. I have given into the fact that I write at my kitchen table (I'm sorry desk, you're too far away, and rather uncomfortable). I bought a lamp a few weeks ago at a junk shop (it's green marble!) and a little 70's style table for all my "currently reading" books. Welcome to MacDowell. A little corner in my kitchen. For the weekends. And for evenings. And for any moment I can carve out for myself to write, and read, and stare.

Now, if only you will stop by and drop off lunch in a basket, I'll be all set.

new one.

{poem was here}